Organizational Leadership: Foundational Principles

1. Leadership starts with leadership of self. 

The first work of anyone aspiring to lead is to cultivate a strong interior: authenticity, courage, wisdom, self-awareness, personal mission, trust. If we cannot notice and strengthen such attributes within ourselves, what hope can we have to notice and strengthen these attributes in others and in organizations?  

2. Organizations start with the people who comprise it.

Strategy, power, resources, technology, market share - none of these will produce an effective organization if we do not first and foremost recognize and affirm the people who comprise it. Our hopes, our fears, our histories, our identities, our strengths, our aspirations. Leaders, this includes you. 

Leadership: Don't Overthink It

"I see you. You are welcome here. Exactly as you are."

What if everyone who entered your office today left feeling this way?

What if you gave yourself permission to feel this way?

Now, get to work!

Soul Work

Picture yourself at a strategic planning meeting. Or imagine yourself having a difficult conversation with a colleague. Or perhaps you are developing next year's budget. Or maybe you are speaking at a community event. Whatever it is, there you are - working.

Is it your soul talking, or your ego?

Is it your soul listening, or your ego?

Is it your soul responding, or your ego?

Is it your soul manifesting, or your ego?

Is it your soul working, or your ego?

Mindfulness and Identity

Our evolutionary minds are inclined to construct a sense of self (who am I?) and a sense of group (with whom do I belong?). This ingrained process of identifying is an outcome of effective survival strategies cultivated through the millenia: create boundaries, seek stability, develop a safe social network and the like.

In Buddha's Brain, Rick Hanson and Richard Mendius continue, "The brain strings together heterogenous moments of self-ing and subjectivity into an illusion of homogenous coherence and continuity." Self-ing and group-ing - it's what evolution has cultivated us to do! 

In a certain sense, such an evolutionary and mindful understanding of why identity is so ingrained within human beings is not that important. We are as we are. The more pragmatic concern is how to infuse identity-conscious approaches into our understanding of and workings with self, others, and groups (including important recognition of the more pernicious effects of these tendencies). Personally, I broaden my understanding and skillset by reading and listening to the many insightful theorists and practitioners operating in the spheres of sociology, critical race theory, intersectionality, feminism, lived experience of oppression, and so on. I suggest you do the same, and put your deepened perspective into practice. 

That said, my investigation today is to consider whether or not the evolutionary and mindful understanding of identity outlined in the lead of this musing can offer any pragmatic insight in its own right. 

One important takeaway - it seems - is that we all construct identities of self and group, which play a significant role in how we live our lives and how society is structured. This propensity is "baked" into our human DNA and social structures, which have been manifesting in human relations for the 200,000 years or so of our existence as a species. Identifying is a real human process we all participate in. "Colorblind" is not how humans are programmed to operate. Privilege for certain social groups at the expense of others is a real thing manifested by the social structures we have created. 

Another important takeaway - one that cuts against some of the determinism in other parts of this essay - is that self-ing and group-ing is a process of our minds that - beyond our minds - is illusory. Of course, as subjective human beings, we can never get beyond our minds. Yet this insight encourages a certain humility, a softening of the edges of our identity constructions, by seeing identity for what it is - human, all too human. 

The potential for insight is at the heart of mindfulness practice: to see - if only dimly - the nature of our minds and - from that extended vantage point - to choose practices that move us in the directions we want to go. When we notice our shared inclination to construct self and group identities, then we can be more intentional about how we present and respond as human beings - whether at home, at work, or beyond. 

Human Being

Come to think of it, I really appreciate the idea of living and working as a human being. On the one hand, our minds strive for permanence and certainty, constructing mansions of self, a "me" that is unchanging and eternal. On the other hand, ancient contemplative practice and contemporary neuroscience view this effort as illusory, even harmful.  Being, as in the present participle of be, feels more like an ongoing process of existence. It is movement, it is fleeting, it is the here and now, it is flow of energy, it is impermanent. Through practice, we can cultivate our interior capacity to show up in our best being in the external world. What else can we do? 

Living-Working-Being. 

Opportunity Gap

A mindful practice enlivens the part of us that sees our experience more clearly. It disentangles - if imperfectly - all the layers of our thinking and feeling minds by noticing - to an extent - all the layers of our thinking and feeling minds. Layers such as fear, biases, and ego. 

From this vantage point, we examine - as best we can - how closely aligned are our actions with our aspirations, our intentions with our impacts, our perceptions of our work with others' perception of our work. The first thing we notice is how entangled in fear, bias and ego our minds truly are. It is what it is. 

But when we notice the challenge of our mind situation, and view a gap between how things are and how we aspire things to be, then we have opportunity. It is a creative space that empowers us to choose realistic steps that we can take to bring our actuality and our aspirations into closer and closer alignment. We do so with equanimity, not with judgment. Being human is not about perfection, it is about continual growth. 

What then are the antidotes that we need to cultivate through meditation practice? To see what we fear and choose courage instead. To see our biases and choose clarity instead. To see our ego and choose light-hearted humility instead. This takes practice. Sit down, breathe, and be present. 

Extinguish the Fires [...]

Extinguish the fires with compassion, joy, and equanimity. 

This intention emerged from meditation practice at the start of my work day. It is curious to see the seedlings that sprout within our own minds when we provide it time and inspiration (in this case, a guided meditation on mindful leadership with Marc Lesser). To me, such creative insight is a beautiful result of spending some quiet time in the practice before jumping into the work.

I come into the office this morning with concerns that require my immediate attention in order to keep things on track - a fire. Part me jumps into judgmental mode - why did we not prevent this? Part of me feels annoyed - uggh. Part of me jumps into control mode - I need to intervene and fix this. However, stepping back to gain perspective, these knee-jerk reactions are probably not the most effective approaches.

To re-set my mind and heart with intention, then, allows me to show up in these spaces in a way that better reflects my values and principles. To reframe judgment as compassion - how can I be helpful to others in this situation? To reframe annoyance as joy - variety is the spice of life! To reframe control as equanimity - what is the best way to remedy the situation?

Extinguish the fires with compassion, joy, and equanimity. I like it. Had I jumped right into the day mindlessly, right into the fire as it were, I would have done so blindly without insight.

PS - After writing this blog, I approached my concerns mindfully. Turns out the fire was not actually a fire at all. Would you look at that - part of me was getting all worked up over nothing. Shocking. And to think, I was on the verge of making a mountain out of a molehill. Surprise!

I'm Too Busy

Your personal well-being is the foundation upon which all of your life's activities happen. 

In my view - which data and lived experience strongly supports - a strong foundation of mindfulness and well-being is absolutely necessary for you to fulfill your highest potential in all that you do - at home, at work, everywhere! 

Sometimes we all say "I'm too busy..." Yes, we're all too busy most of the time. 

In the long run, this is not a healthy nor a productive way to live. 

Window into the Soul

Many of the activities we spend most of our time on each day on are not very important. Yes, they may be necessary. But important? Not really. 

Let's take work as an example. In my role, I do many necessary things to ensure the smooth operation of a student support program in higher education. It is necessary for me to manage budgets, oversee staff, send emails, build partnerships, attend meetings, and the like. If I do these necessary things well, then I contribute to educational opportunity, I play some small role in impacting the lives of others for the better. 

"Is this not important?" you may ask. 

If I were to quit doing this work today, there would be a short disruption in the smooth operation of the program, but soon enough, someone new would step in and the program would carry on. Realistically, this new person would do the necessary activities just as well as I. 

The necessary activities - the what of work, the what of daily life, the what of personal wellbeing - are neither good nor bad. They are simply necessary to achieve a desired end, whatever that may be. 

Mindfulness encourages us to look closer at the true nature of things beyond the superficial fleeting narratives and simulations constantly playing out in our minds. Like shadows on the wall of Plato's cave, we may not be humanly capable to see the true nature of things directly. Yet, when we pay attention to the way our mind presents the world to itself (which is to say how "I" understand "Me" within experience), we can start to see - if dimly - the true nature of our mind and how it interprets the true nature of things. This improved clarity, then, gives us a slightly better vantage point on everything else beyond "me" so we can show up as our best "selves" in wider experience.  

All of this esoteric philosophizing to say: we must slow down, look closely, and be intentional about how we understand and act in the world. 

When I make this effort - as imperfect as it can only be - I see a key distinction between what I do with my days and why/how I act in the world. For me, the why and how I act in the world is what is important. By better aligning my actions with an understanding of why they are important and how I want to be within "the work," I am continually focusing my energy on what - to me - truly matters. 

In my view, such a mindful approach is integral to leadership - clarity to see what is important and intention to guide action.